EVIL
(Existence Extinguished)
By Robert Clapp
"When talking about chocolate chip cookies, good and evil, we need to get our recipes straight."  -- R. Clapp
Intellectual discussion, confrontation, and writing not only guide, but may be the only way to guarantee human survival, and they are the greatest of pleasures.  The tools for this marketplace of ideas and cerebral enjoyment are WORDS.  However, their use rests atop an Occam's razor of sorts - They either mirror reality or rape it.  Words used to deal with reality are not a matter of opinion, of polls, of a vote, or a matter of historical context.  Such words are conceptual representations objectively subsumed by reality.  Through our senses, perceptions, and scientific exploration, these words allow us to accurately understand reality; they represent the truth about reality. They are, then, the foundation for paradigms by which we live our lives.  They provide a recipe for us to write and reason about The Singularity, The Evolution of Life, Existence, and Consciousness.  The most important ones, we call axioms or laws defining self-evident truth.
This essay is about two of those self-evident words, in fact the two most important to the existence and survival of Homo sapiens: EVIL and PRIME.  Words that as Plato remarked decide matters of " life and death." As will become clear EVIL can be thought of as ANTI-PRIME; they have the same genesis.  They hold a Janus-faced symbiotic relationship, though never for beneficial reasons.  They are Siamese twins that evolved simultaneously at that nexus in time when Hominids evolved a cerebral cortex capable of consciousness of itself, and of its mortality.  Together, these conjoined twins (EVIL AND PRIME) are synonymous with THE INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING.
When I conceptualized PRIME in essays and the book I'm writing, as the ultimate existent subsuming all paradigms of and about human consciousness and existence, I did not formally conceptualize its polar opposite.  That archetype of Anti-Prime is, of course, the word EVIL.  It alone, of all words available, etymologically integrates the absolute negation of PRIME, hence of existence and consciousness.  However, in this exceptional case, Noah Webster's great book offers little help.  It simply states,
1. Anything that causes displeasure, injury, pain, suffering, etc.
2. Moral depravity, wickedness, anything morally bad or wrong.
Less than adequate.  Such meanings, while adjunctive to EVIL, are in no way the equivalent of EVIL - The absolute negation of existence and consciousness.  That suigenersis is yet to be established.  That I will do in this paper.  It will also include a presentation of corollary words intrinsic to EVIL, but not EVIL qua EVIL.  Today's universal view of evil, especially in scholarly circles, is false, and is nothing more than a subjective abstraction with no roots to reality. That subjective conception views EVIL outside the only objective reality - The Individual Human Being - as does virtually all of history's philosophical thought.  This non-existent subjectivism sees evil as either a kind of Platonic Archetypical Form; or as a Theistic Creation.  In fact, both views absurdly hold that evil's existence is "here" with or without The Individual Human Being - even outside the material world.  Their only difference, and it blurs together, is one serves a secular agenda while the other upholds a mystical one.  Even when "including" individual human beings, these "scholarly experts" do so only as statistics, or as pawns in a greater drama.  The damn fools can't understand, that no matter how divinely or eruditely formulated, their recipe for chocolate chip cookies will never salivate the senses without concrete matter-flour, sugar, chocolate chips, etc. Analogously, NO paradigm of existence and consciousness is sensually real without the Individual Human Being!
In most academic treatises the discussion of "evil" revolves around numbers: Hitler versus a serial killer or the killing of a hundred people on a plane carrying a bomb versus letting it crash on a city killing thousands.  These bean counters conclude "magnitude" to be the litmus test for evil.  In Star Trek movies Mr. Spock made this morality by the numbers famous with his, "The sacrifice of the one for the good of the many."  Politically this "ethic" is implicit in, "Government is a necessary evil."  A smaller number of these wizards of the weird conclude that there are "natural" evils (a throwback to prehistoric personification of the phenomena of the natural world):Epidemics, floods, volcanoes, famine, etc.  The Theistic thinkers of this group (a throwback to ancient mysticism) call them "Acts of God!"  In effect, they create an Omnipotent Being and credit "IT" with the genesis of evil.  Thus from this transcendental revelation springs the logic that if I slip on a banana peel, hit my head and die; the culprit is an ALL GOOD, ALL POWERFUL BEING who chooses to dabble in contradiction from time to time!
Keep a watchful eye when eating your chocolate chip cookies!  If God be in a perverse or humorous mood, He may spring a chocolate allergy attack on your DNA and take your "soul" before you can finish eating them with ice-cold milk for an earthly delight.  Real world: Of course the natural events of The Singularity and Evolution will be with us, but such events are not EVIL, and such fickle God shit does not exist!
When writing of "ultimates," it's necessary to understand them in contrast with their polar opposite.  As will be seen EVIL and PRIME are such opposites.  They've co-existed within the genus Homo from the moment in evolution when Hominids evolved consciousness.  During that evolution, after consciousness began, after envisioning their own mortality, they collectively "invented" gods and eventually Mysticism, and Tribalism (Today Church and State).  As will be seen they were/are the spawning ground for the greatest EVIL. (In less than 300 more years Homo sapiens will completely obliterate all historical connection to such fairy tales, born of fear and ignorance, but that's another story.)
To continue, Mysticism and Tribalism became superior "existents" to individual Homo sapiens, and by their convoluted logic allowed, commanded, that individual human beings be killed, tortured, and sacrificed, for the protection and the perpetuation of those non-existents.  Conceptually, throughout history, these non-existents became identified as chiefs and witchdoctors, kings and gods, popes and presidents, bibles and flags, bombs and bullets, borders and prisons ad nauseum!
Hundreds of fools, worshipped as great thinkers, formalized such collective claptrap and are still worshipped today:They are called professors of philosophy, history, politics, religion, etc. and their sinister nests are called universities.  Below are quotes from two of the oldest who are exemplars of such Anti-Reason, Anti-Prime, Pro-Evil thinking.
1. Aristotle: The determinant of what is just or unjust is entirely relative to the state.  The individual is subject to government and can be judged just or unjust, but the government itself cannot.  The state is by nature clearly prior to the individual.
Comment: AND this is from one of the best.  He dismantled Plato's mystical world and gave us the world of matter.  Yet, this same man can take a non-existent entity-government-and give it a material nature "superior" to a material existent-The Individual Human Being!!  AND, this in the year 2002 is still believed by virtually every living human being!!
2. St. Paul: The individual shall not avenge himself, for God-and the rulers of earthly states shall punish; but the state itself shall not be subject to such judgments.
Comment: AND, if St. Paul were here today, he would surely include the Vatican under the same exemption as the state.  At this very moment a hunched over mystic (Pope John Paul II) has called sexual assaults on children a sin against God, and has yet to apologize to the victims.  Therefore, an omnipotent Being-who can NOT BE harmed-is apologized to, BUT a small child who has had his rectum or mouth ravaged by a smelly, vile fiend is ignored!!  AND this, too, in the year 2002 is still believed true by the vast majority of human beings!!
Presently, I call the "thinking" of Aristotle and St. Paul-The President Bush and Cardinal Law Doctrine.  Their phony philosophy is the precursor to the EVIL under discussion in this paper, and its grip on the minds of the many has not lessened. It remains so strong that murdering little children in Afghanistan is called collateral damage and sodomizing little children in Boston is called a sin against God!!!!  Under the Bush and Law Doctrine these acts of EVIL are rewarded with medals for the murderers and forgiveness and relocation for the rapists!!!!
Hopefully (Most likely wishful thinking) it should be clear, then, that EVIL is a destructive act, a deadly blow of a non-existent collective's consciousness against the existence of its individual human members-WHO DO EXIST! Of course, it's also the same EVIL act when done individual to individual.  In my philosophy (Scientific Realism for those who like labels) it's PRIME VS. ANTI-PRIME that defines EVIL.  The following is my definition of PRIME and an objective and reality based synopsis, from my forthcoming book, of PRIME's position.  From that definition and position, what EVIL IS will BE made crystal clear.  Here's the definition,
PRIME, first in time; first in existence; first in quality; first in value.  This position is held ONLY BY--THE INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING.
Therefore, to make any attempt to understand EVIL, we must first understand PRIME.  We must understand how TRUTH about the paradigms of existence, intellectually constructed by Homo sapiens, defined and discovered through physical science and evolution, found its genesis in PRIME, and how Mysticism and Tribalism found their genesis in the subjective falsehoods of collective non-existents.  The first gave us medicine, wealth, and life-the second war, poverty, and the death penalty.
With Prime as Prime, Individual Human Beings use REALITY to better their existence.  And, for Reality TO BE, it first needed a viewer; that viewer IS The Individual Human Being, NOT Church and State!  Without PRIME, Consciousness and Reality cease to exist.  Consequently any past, present or future collective pretenders to PRIME, were literally impossible!
Surprisingly, this is easily proved, and since so few understand is testimony to the power of collectivism's 2000 years of propaganda and brainwashing-Secular and Theistic.  Actually the proof is undeniably self-evident, but for Hominids' early survival such cognition was impossible.  Instead their "invented"  (Necessary at the time) non-existents and icons have universally usurped the Individual Human Being as the ultimate value.  Then and now God and Leviathan falsely hold that position.  This is in spite of the fact that any material proof of such non-existents is impossible and a contradiction on its face.  This is in spite of the fact that to produce some-THING above and before (As Aristotle lied) the Individual Human Being would command its material consciousness to identify and validate such existence.  Yet, it's absolutely clear that there is NO such "type" of consciousness and even the idea of such a "type" is an intellectual and substantive contradiction.  Any such attributes of BEING, live and die with The Individual Human BEING.  After all, what can any individual's senses and cognition "offer" as PRIME if he/she not BE living?  What other PRIMACY can he/she "offer'uot; without obvious contradiction, when they are asleep?  When under anesthesia?  OK, the coup de grace, when they are dead?
It should BE clear as your next breath that there is absolutely no way for me or anyone else to know of existence, let alone offer proof of such existence, until each individual human being is born.  Just as breathtakingly clear, there is absolutely no way for each such individual to prove an existence after he/she is dead!  Therefore, ALL paradigms of or about existence made to function while conscious, are absolutely dependent on the consciousness of at least ONE individual human being.  I sometimes call it the Robinson Crusoe Law prior to meeting Friday.  (Then the trouble began). Self-evidently speaking, WHEN I AM HERE EVERYTHING IS HERE.  WHEN I AM GONE EVERYTHING IS GONE! There is simply no way to disprove it, or to prove otherwise.  NO! I will not entertain soothsayers, crystal balls, bleeding statues, priests, bibles, constitutions, supreme courts, fools in a white house, miracles, or television evangelists with 1-800 numbers to God!  PRIME IS PRIME!
Because of this omnipotent and infallible position PRIME dictates everything that is axiomatically predicted about existence, or described as reality.  Perhaps a quote from Ray Kurzweil, a man of genius and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines will lend validity, if not belief, to my LAW OF PRIME,
"Our story begins perhaps 15 billion years ago.  No conscious life existed to appreciate the birth of our universe-in retrospect-we could say that any universe that fails to evolve Conscious
life to apprehend its existence never existed in the first place.  [If] life never would have evolved,we could never have existed in the first place.";
Mr. Kurzweil's statement, correctly, places the need for consciousness before the universe is there.  Ayn Rand, the best philosophical mind since Aristotle, correctly places the need for existence to be there to have something to be conscious of.  I quote, "Existence precedes consciousness, because consciousness is consciousness of an object."
This debate between who's first still rages hot in university classrooms, and that is where it should stay!  As stated they are both correct, and I agree with both of them! BUT I make a subtle and sagacious distinction that makes it possible to settle an impossible argument: Nothing is there, consciousness or existence, unless there is at least ONE INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING as an existent BEING conscious of his or herself.  That's PRIME! Not some ivory tower debate between thought and substance!  Yes, it's a subtle distinction, but one made absolutely necessary by the reality of PRIME!  I refuse to enter their debate.  To me it?s infallibly clear that AN Individual Human Being must BE present for such musings to even begin.  I conclude: Have it anyway you want it; it still commands your presence. Such cognitive "games" will always require at least one Individual Human Being this side of the womb and this side of the tomb!
It is this catastrophic failure of Homo sapiens to accept (understand) PRIME that eventually birthed EVIL.  It has left anything and everything as a candidate for PRIME.  That prehistorically perverted and twisted epistemology made the killing of PRIME justifiable, ethical, and moral, NOT for PRIME by PRIME, but for a falsely chosen non-existent, to "protect" itself from PRIME!  Unlike random murder among PRIME, which is condemned by all, False Prime openly invites, mandates, and legislates (Historically) any collective form of STATISM and THEISM to use the coercion and force of the bullet and the ballot to murder individual Human Beings (Clearly stated in the Constitution) as is "necessary and proper" to insure the survival of that non-existent collective.
This evil and twisted logic is made clear in the following statement by Solicitor General Seth Waxman when asked about FBI agent Horiuchi's cold-blooded murder of Vicki Weaver and her son at Ruby Ridge,
"Vicki Weaver's death was not the result of excessive force. These law enforcement officials are privileged [emphasis mine] to do what would be unlawful if done by a private citizen."
The identical thinking was behind Judge Kafka's ruling in 1987 (United States v Sondini) when in support of the government's theft, of a found innocent man's, money, he ruled: "The innocence of the owner [of the money] (Emphasis mine) is irrelevant!" This literally insane reasoning is not simply noticed by dissidents like me.  Hear Supreme Court Justice Brandeis on the subject, "Crime is contagious.  If the government becomes the law breaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself."  Brandeis made a similarly strong dissent in Olmstead about the government being allowed to break the law.  Of course he did this while sitting as a lawbreaker himself.
It is clear, then, that any chameleon, non-existent form of Statism empowers itself to kill Individual Human Beings to ensure its survival and to enhance its power.  Even if each and every Individual Human Being were killed-Congressional pipe dreams and religious dogma could leave earth with "living" flags and laws; "preaching" bibles commandments flying and hanging as PRIME over the mass grave.  This distinct possibility would be the final victory for EVIL!
Now!  You have EVIL defined and conceptualized.  It's Ted Bundy killing college girls in Florida and George W. Bush killing innocent girls in Afghanistan.  It's Richard Fisher killing his family in Scottsdale, Arizona and Henry Kissinger killing 100,000 families in Vietnam and Cambodia.  It's a madman burning his daughter to death in Phoenix, Arizona and General Westmoreland napalming young girls in Vietnam.  It's Arab terrorists killing 3,000 New Yorkers and President Jackson killing 4,000 Indians on The Trail of Tears.  How about something recent?  OK, picture a July day 2002 in Afghanistan; envision a happy moment in two young people's lives and 70 more happy people in attendance.  Picture a WEDDING.  Now hear a roaring sound above, look up and see, what is a common occurrence these days in this small country, an American B-52 bomber; watch in terror (something this bomber claims to be fighting) as this instrument of death drops a 2,000 pound bomb and in a craven act of EVIL extinguishes the existence of over 70 happy individual human beings.
EVIL is when the existence and consciousness of an Individual Human Being is extinguished! It's Anti-Prime killing Prime!  The EVIL is EVIL, but the differences among my preceding examples should not miss a rational and moral mind.  So, I'll not waste my time explaining that difference to Pavlovian zombies of Church and State-OK, I'll give a tip-one is primarily passion, the other policy; and when it comes to the number of such historically EVIL acts, a quantum world exists between them.  If as the poet John Keets wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," what is more beautifully true than a life, and more falsely ugly than its murder by government policy?
There are many other "acts" against PRIME that are frequently called "EVIL" but are not.  In my anger, I've mislabeled them myself, but such multiple applications of EVIL are not possible.  Evil remains the murdering of Individual Human Beings by other Individual Human Beings and the murdering of Individual Human Beings by non-existent collectives with "permission" to do so, among these is, of course, the death penalty and war.  Other words are conceptual corollaries to EVIL that define heinous acts against Individual Human Beings, but do not extinguish their existence and consciousness.  Among these words are TERROR, TORTURE, CRUELTY, RAPE, ASSAULT, etc.  They are immoral and sickening, but unless they lead to the death of an Individual Human Being, they are not EVIL.  An immediate example would have been the murder of Ray Krone in Arizona by the death penalty, if DNA had not proven him innocent, in contrast is terror, torture, and cruelty he endured by the government as an innocent man.
To which Arizona Republic columnist David Leibowitz said in a column 04/14/02 that Mr. Krone should be grateful; after all he got a unique "opportunity" to "appreciate" America's magnificent justice, and that we should simply "pat him on the back and send him on his way."  He should feel blessed to have sat on death row of the "Best Justice System" in the world!  I shall logically assume, with great confidence, that if he had been murdered by the government, Mr. Leibowitz would be claiming that Mr. Krone should be grateful for the opportunity to go to heaven early!  With a pat on his dead back!
The STATE owes Mr. Krone plenty-the least of which is money!  If it were true, as the STATE eternally claims, that no one is above the law, and that if you break the law you should be punished, then any judge, police person, prosecutor, prison hack, etc., involved in either the narrowly escaped murder of Krone OR the factual terror and torture of Krone, should be put on death row for 10 ½ years!  However, as we've endlessly heard from Aristotle, St. Paul, Seth Waxman, Judge Kafka, and that sage of all sages David Leibowitz-The STATE is above the law, allowed to murder and torture, and is never to be punished!
For any intelligent and moral person, who truly wishes to vicariously "Feel" the pain of EVIL and its COROLLARIES, I suggest the reading of Helen Jackson's A Century of Dishonor, the truthful account of how BOTH were used with malice to exterminate the American Indian who-if the bullshit about non-existents like BORDER and NATION-STATE did not "exist" by force-had the ONLY claim to the North American continent.  Schizophrenia: "loss of contact with reality," "subject to hallucinations and delusions."  Example: Anyone who can read A Century of Dishonor, the true horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the true history of the Vietnam War, Waco, Ruby Ridge, bombs on hospitals and weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan ad nauseum, and then can pledge to a flag or kneel to an "All-Good" "All-Powerful God" has this disease.
Want something a little more celestial? The work of divine collectivism instead of human collectivism?  Well just follow the continuing sagas of the Catholic Church's ordained school for pedophiles, perverts, and predators.  Want to know how to sodomize and rape (without having to belong to a political party) with impunity,
sort of a god-like version of Seth Waxman's
privileged position?  It's easy; simply go to Cardinal Law and the peers registration office.  Offered are two major areas of study: Carnal Desires and Sadistic Pedophilia.
This school has been around for centuries.  As a child and a young man, I attended them for 12 years.  While I luckily was left out of their extra-curricular activities, I had friends who were not so lucky.  They, particularly one very young  and very unlucky altar boy, who committed suicide, did not escape the filth of smelly, grimy old men in black robes groping and raping their bodies.  Just like the STATE versions of cop beatings, batons up the rectum, and locked up on death row while innocent, the victims had NO recourse!   And, if you think for one second that these young children knew how to "Just say no," or how or to whom to report such terror, cruelty, and rape, you are either a  closet pedophile or a damn  fool!
How about some more contemporary "stuff" showing the collective EVIL and LUNACY of the STATE: First the EVIL paraphrased from James Bovard's 1994 book Lost Rights; The Seattle Times, and Gore Vidal's book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, How We Got to Be So Hated:
"When the police broke into Robin Pratt's home, one of the storm troopers named Aston approached her with his gun drawn while the other Nazis yelled, 'Get down.'  Ms. Pratt began to get down, but she paused, looked up and pleaded, 'Please don't hurt my children' (She had her six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece in the home).  Aston pointed his gun and fired, shooting her in the neck.  Though she was not yet dead, and could not speak because her throat was mangled by the bullet, she was left to strangle in her own blood.  They did nothing to help her, yet handcuffed her face down."
Now the LUNACY, which is taken from Bovard's book and Vidal's book:
"On March 8, 1991, during a drug test for high school athletes at Sandburg High School in Chicago, two teachers [Gender is not given for the teachers so virtual voyeurs can fill in their own details] spotted a sixteen-year-old boy wearing sweat pants.  With eyes glitteringly alert, they cased his crotch, which they thought 'appeared to be too well endowed.' He was taken to a locker room and stripped bare.  No drugs were found, only a nonstandard sexual organ.  Since there is no law [YET!] penalizing a boy for being better hung than his teachers, he was returned to class.  The boy's family sued but the judge ruled against them saying 'The school did all they could to ensure the plaintiff's privacy was not eroded.' [My confident belief is the judge suffered from penis envy!]"
In closing this essay, I have a personal imperative to address.  In my otherwise scholarly writing, I frequently and deliberately use profane, blasphemous, and confrontational language, either to hammer the obvious home, or to simply blast and insult someone who deserves it, or more!  I do not want to let such an opportunity go by in this essay.  So, I close with what a rodeo cowboy once told me about such people as I condemn in this essay (Statists and Theists) who collectively practice or make policy that results in EVIL and its COROLLARIES, "The world would be a much better place if such assholes had just run down their daddy's leg!"
For truth and taste keep the recipe straight,
Robert Clapp
5244 E. Hashknife Rd. (480) 664-2633
Phoenix, AZ 85054
[This article originally appeared in the September-December 2002 issue of THE THOUGHT.]
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